


Something in the way he moves

by sirona



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Boys In Love, Bucky Barnes' sinfully pretty fucking mouth, Fluff, Get Together, Kissing, M/M, Steve Rogers is no one's fool, author has a slight obsession with Bucky Barnes, no really just try him, no spoilers!, post-CATWS, so does Steve Rogers though so that's okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 07:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1379857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirona/pseuds/sirona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something about the way Bucky Barnes moves, no matter his age or the decade they currently happen to live in, something that captures Steve's attention better than anything else in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something in the way he moves

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, this might say post-CATWS BUT I have not seen the movie and I have another week of agony to go so this was the next best thing to curling up in a ball on the rug and sobbing brokenly into my glass of wine - which is to say, **no spoilers** here for the movie. :)
> 
> Wrote this just because my obsession with Bucky fucking Barnes is reaching actually worrisome levels, and it needed an out. But also because boys in love. :')
> 
> All my thanks to Anna for the read-over and telling me I got these two right. <3 ILU bb.

It’s him, but it isn't.

Steve used to spend hours watching the man; hundreds of thousands of minutes per month dedicated to memorising each sweep of his body, the curve of his shoulders, the arch at the small of his back. He used to catalogue the way Bucky moved obsessively -- the flex of his arms, the tension in his legs when he turned, sprang, blocked a punch. It was smooth and perfectly controlled; even when Bucky was so mad he couldn't see straight, he fought like a soldier, not a brawler. He had a strategy for every jab, every chair he swung like a blunt instrument, every brick wall he utilised as leverage. Even at fifteen, Bucky Barnes in a fight had been a sight to behold.

In the army, he only got better at waging war. Everything became a weapon. That's not how they were trained to think (they weren't trained to think at all), but experience changes everything, and Bucky had seen enough of that by the time Steve found him again. Not to mention that Bucky Barnes has always been much sharper than anyone but Steve ever gave him credit for (and that includes himself).

Bucky Barnes in the Howling Commandos Attack Squad was a force to be reckoned with, a whirlwind of rage focused into intent, a sucking mass of fury when Steve was threatened -- Steve never did manage to break him out of the habit of fighting Steve's battles. Bucky Barnes in the 40s was a skilled fighter and an even better strategist. He trained memory into his muscles until he could barely stand up straight; he pummelled the stuffing out of the other Commandos on the pretext of sparring, and he made them into better attack units, no doubt about it. He moved with purpose at all times; to see him coming was to know you were in for a hell of a tumble.

This Bucky Barnes, you did not see coming at all. 

It’s been months since Steve found him again, kicked and punched and bled until he dragged Bucky Barnes back out from behind the block the Russians put in place. The echo of the Winter Soldier is mostly gone from his eyes now – but not from his muscles, not from the way his spine remembers to twist like liquid quicksilver, spin and bend and flex his body into movement that should not knock the breath out of Steve's lungs but does anyway. This incarnation of Bucky Barnes is no longer the man who killed on reflex, because it was easier to complete a mission if no one was alive to compromise it. That doesn’t mean that he has forgotten how to come with the night, inexorable, relentless, hidden in plain sight, you’ll never see him coming until he wants you to, until it’s too late to do anything about it. It doesn’t mean that he has stopped melting away, hiding like a cat in shadow, suddenly absent from the world.

His hair is no longer scraggly and unkept, obscuring his face even without the mask, but this is not the face of Bucky Barnes of the Howling Commandos, either. This man has seen things no one should have been subject to. His eyes still burn, but it’s with the fire of lost, broken, damned things. Someone who has had to do things to survive that defy any kind of moral code. Someone who has not seen the light for a long, long time. Someone left to rot, alone and abandoned by everyone but the devil himself. 

This man is not the same man Steve Rogers used to know, a lifetime ago.

Steve Rogers does not care.

No, really, allow him to explain _just how much he does not give a rat’s ass_ about what people think, or what people think _he_ should think. This is not the way Steve Rogers operates – not now, not ever.

If Bucky doesn’t want him – fine. That would be, Steve would be fine with that. He’s a big boy now, he can take it. But to pretend he doesn’t desperately want to know what Bucky’s body would feel like straddling him, or holding him down, or _moving_ over him like Bucky moves on the sparring mat, now that would be a bald-faced lie and cowardice to boot; and if there is one thing Steve has proven to himself and to the world without a shadow of a doubt, it’s that he is no coward. Steve Rogers has always, will always want Bucky Barnes any way he could have him. 

He has never been oblivious to the goings-on around him. Sure, Bucky used to sometimes spend weeks sleeping with a different dame—woman—every night, but he always came home to Steve. Every night, he came to bed and he curled around Steve’s scrawny back like his personal hot brick, limbs weighed down with fatigue, so worn out by exertion that Steve had had to wonder whether it really was accidental, or served a different purpose. He would lie there and smile in the dark when Bucky barely lasted a minute before burying his nose in the nape of Steve’s neck, and they would both pretend that his sinfully beautiful lips did not linger on Steve’s skin. There was a war going on; any derivation from normality would stand out like even more of a sore thumb, and Bucky has always had a stupid guardian angel complex when it came to Steve, even if it meant denying himself what he wanted. It irritated Steve beyond belief, but he respected Bucky too much to go against his choice.

He had consoled himself with thoughts of ‘after’ – after the war, after Bucky came back to him as hale and whole as possible, they could both get jobs and rent a nice apartment with two bedrooms for the look of it, and turn one of them into a studio for Steve and an office for Bucky, and Steve could paint while Bucky swore his way through the textbooks he would stubbornly force himself to learn. And Steve could finally ask, ‘Would you?’ ‘Could you?’ and know all he was risking was his own heart, and that Bucky was worth it. 

The fact that they now live seventy years after the time Steve had envisioned does not change things one whit, has not chipped away any of Steve’s determination to grasp a tiny piece of happiness for himself. Anyone who has a problem with that, Steve will happily reeducate for free.

“Hey,” Bucky says shyly from Steve’s doorway, still finding his feet, still having to work to believe that nothing has changed; that yes, they can pick up exactly where they left off, as far as Steve is concerned. “Wanna go for a walk?”

“Do I,” Steve agrees eagerly. He shoves a sketchbook and some pencils into the messenger bag Tony gave him, once he’d finished laughing at Steve’s leather briefcase (Steve is man enough to admit that it’s vastly more comfortable, and having both of his hands free is always a bonus), and pats his pockets for his keys and phone. He looks up at Bucky’s amused huff—and hell, it happens again.

He will never, ever get tired of the way Bucky’s mouth lifts, quirks, twists, those beautifully shaped lips so mobile and expressive. Steve honestly does not recall looking at that mouth and not wanting to kiss it, find out what it tastes like, if it’ll feel as delicious on his lips and Steve always imagined it would. 

He is staring, again. He is staring, but this time Bucky’s smile doesn’t slip. He doesn’t turn away. This time, Bucky takes a slow but sure step closer, and another, and one more, until Steve breathes in sharply and his chest brushes Bucky’s. Until Steve looks at him and gets looked at right back, no misdirection, no deflection, just Bucky’s blue, blue eyes and his criminally long eyelashes close enough for Steve to count if he wanted to. 

“Now?” Steve asks, half-amused, half-knee-shakingly-relieved, his serum-enhanced heart beating so hard in his chest it’s a wonder it doesn’t flop right out onto the parquet. 

Bucky looks at him assessingly for another moment, then nods once, decisive. 

“Now,” he says, voice low and warm and resonating with the same emotion Steve feels buzzing through his bloodstream. 

“Thank God,” Steve hears himself breathe. He reaches forward, and Bucky doesn’t twist out of his hold but he does twist in a way that makes Steve’s mouth dry out, ensconces himself into Steve’s arms, twines them together in a way that Steve doesn’t know if he could ever disentangle, but knows he never wants to try.

“Yeah,” Bucky sighs against his lips, and Lord, they have waited for so long but they can wait another moment, breathe each other’s air, stroke covetous palms over backs and shoulders and arms, slick steel and warm flesh, allow themselves to give in to desire.

“Kiss me, Rogers,” Bucky murmurs and Steve’s blood lights on fire like gasoline from a flaming match, swift and explosive. He sways helplessly into Bucky’s arms, moans wantonly against Bucky’s ridiculous, tempting, smirking mouth, lips softer than they have any right to be, moving smoothly against Steve’s like Steve always knew they would, taking and giving and ‘Bucky’ all over. Bucky’s tongue is quick and teasing, a hint of the future, a promise in the making, and Steve opens up to it without a second thought, like he always will for Bucky, give him anything he wanted at a mere hint.

Steve grumbles and complains and presses closer when Bucky tries to withdraw, gasping when Bucky retaliates by twisting his hips in a seduction Steve neither can nor wants to resist. Bucky purrs into his mouth, the smug son of a gun, and when Steve pulls back to arch an eyebrow at him, Bucky’s eyes are dark and half-lidded and Steve’s dick has never leapt to attention so fast in his life. Bucky darts in to lick his lips one last time before stepping back, and Steve can’t stop the shudder at the sudden cold on his chest. 

“Now that was worth waiting for,” Bucky drawls, a direct correlation between his dark, sex-drenched voice and the sudden vice Steve’s pants become around his private parts. “I really want that walk, though,” Bucky adds, smirking again. 

Steve scowls at him, and Bucky laughs, sharp and painful and bright, hands stuck in the pockets of his black, skintight jeans, a suspicious bulge in the middle that Steve has to work really hard to tear his eyes away from.

“Come on, Rogers, humour me. And afterwards you can buy me dinner and take me home, just like I always wanted you to.”

And just like that Steve can barely breathe past the lump in his throat. It feels like his asthma came back, except it’s sparklier, like bubbles bursting on the back of his tongue. He smiles, feels it stretch his cheeks and lift his face; it grows even more when he sees Bucky blink and lose some of that razor-sharp focus, sexy as it is to have it directed at him.

“Only if you promise not to be a gentleman about it,” Steve says, thrilled when it makes Bucky swallow tightly and breathe an oath.

“That’s an iron-clad deal, pal,” Bucky says; and his eyes still burn, but Steve can see the warm light of the summer sun in them now, playful and life-giving and alive.

“Then lay on, Macduff,” Steve allows generously, sweeping an arm theatrically for Bucky to precede him. He basks in the smile that gets him, slow and dangerous and full of appreciation, no holds barred this time, nothing to stop them from taking what they want, and damn the rest.

Steve has seen enough of the twenty-first century by now to learn a thing or two, and by God, he aims to misbehave.


End file.
